


an empire for two

by eightbots



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-17
Updated: 2015-10-17
Packaged: 2018-04-26 20:46:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5019871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eightbots/pseuds/eightbots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meenah wants a break from being the Empress and everything that entails. She hides on board her girlfriend's spaceship. Things do not go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PerfidiousFate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerfidiousFate/gifts).



> Request 3 Meenah Peixes/Aranea Serket
> 
> Les8ifins! I’d really like to see them around the time of their session – they were both awkward and unpopular and clung to each other. How would their relationship look like? Anything post-Aranea’s villain time would be awesome too – them working out their differences! Angry make-outs! No-Sgrub AU with Meenah the unwilling Condesce and whatever you think Aranea would do would be delightful. I’m also not averse at all to quadrant-flipping with them. Most of all, though, I like how cute and sweet their friendship is canonically, and I also like that they’re both pretty messed up people, and I love how these two facts work together.

The officers are talking again.

Of course, the officers are always talking about something. You aren't surprised. But the current rumor mill could prove to be... problematic.

Being the empath you are, you can tell pretty easily what your crew is thinking if you want to. Usually you don’t bother prodding beyond the impressions and flashes you get from them automatically. They learned to hide their thoughts from you pretty well.

And with the Empress on board, they're trying even harder than usual.

No, you don’t blame them for talking. 'The Captain is sleeping with the Empress' is a pretty juicy rumor, after all. But it could mean a lot of embarrassment for you.

You are sitting in Command, staring at the viewscreen in front of you. Too preocuppied to actually pay attention to what it's showing you - your location, current velocity, Helm data. All the data the ship collected, essentially.

Someone clears their throat right next to you, grabbing your attention. It's your new Head Navigator, a scrawny, very green behind the horns tealblood. She holds out a datapad in front of her and swallows anxiously.

"Captain Serket," she greets.

"Officer Tarrag," you responds politely.

"We've, uh. We've picked up some strange readings."

"What kind of strange readings?" Your worry over rumors is momentarily replaced by a potentially more serious problem.

"It's nothing too out of the ordinary, ma'am, but... when we entered the system just now the scanners detected something out there, but now it's gone." She taps something on her datapad and hands it to you. You look at the readout and furrow your brow. Whatever it was, it was gone too quickly for the scanners to identify it.

"It could be anything," Tarrag continues. "A scavenger we scared away, a big meteorite, even a glitch in the system. But you said to report any anomalies directly to you."

You nod. Though the fact that the Mindfang is transporting the Empress is a closely guarded secret (officially she is on her command ship, overseeing the establishment of her newest colony), there is always the potential that someone had leaked the information.

Almost everyone on the ship below teal had been replaced to minimize the risk of mind reading, but someone could still have betrayed you willingly. Or, less likely, a psychic as powerful as you could have been involved. You hand the datapad back to the officer.

"Maintain course, but keep scanning the system. If something shows up again notify me immediately," you order, and the navigator runs off.

You lean back in your chair and look at your viewscreen again, just in time for the chat client to light up.

\-- coralConqueror [CC] began trolling articulateGraffias [AG] \--

CC: im booored  
CC: come back here   
AG: I can't right now. Something might 8e going on.    
CC: pshhh i wish  
CC: maybe then i wouldnt be dyin over here  
CC: cmon serket   
AG: It could be dangerous!    
CC: you know youre the captain right  
CC: you dont actually have to be on the bridge all the glubbing time you can let other people do stuff   
AG: A ship might have jumped away right after we arrived to this system. If it shows up again they'd have to report it to me anyway, and it'll 8e much faster if I'm in command.    
CC: aight  
CC: then its an order   
AG: What? You can't 8e serious.    
CC: try me gurl  
CC: youll sea   
AG: Meenah I know we have to keep up appearances in front of the others, 8ut I cannot 8elieve you'd order me around like this!    
CC: NOT)(INGS GONNA HAPP-EN  
CC: and dont try to guilt trip me you know that shit aint gonna work  
CC: just get over here for like five minutes  
CC: please  
CC: sea im bein nice   
AG: ........    
CC: if somefin interesting happens while you aint there ill eat my hat  
CC: or your hat  
CC: wait why do you get a cool hat and i only get this shitty-ass tiara i outrank all yall   
AG: Alright! If it means you won't turn the imperial crown into a sun hat, I'll get over there right now.    
CC: Y-ES 38D  
CC: and i was thinkin more like a stockman actually

\-- articulateGraffias [AG]  ceased trolling  coralConqueror [CC]  \--

You get up from your chair. "I'm going to be in my quarters," you announce. "If anything happens tell me over the comms, I'll be back right away."

Those who can saulte, and you head to your room.

**

Just over eight sweep before you were still on Beforus, in Meenah's wing of the Royal Palace. Although officially it was known as the Heiress' wing.

You'd just joined Her Imperous Compassion's Navy after finishing officer training. The Assimilator, the ship you'd been assigned to, was due to leave the next evening.

Now you are a Captain, and Her Imperious Compassion is your sworn enemy.

The rebellion surprised exactly no one, and spread very quickly. While most of trollkind likes to see it as a radical shift of the status quo (for better or for worse, depending on which side you ask), you know you are just exchanging one type of tyranny for another.

One likes to disguise itself as benevolent, assimilating cultures rather than destroying them. The other is more direct, honest and in your opinion, much more effective. There is definitely the right time to be subtle, but conquest and governance aren't it. Plus, you never really liked the old Empress anyway.

You make your way down the Mindfang's gray hallways and step into the Captain's quarters. Officially the ship's highest officer is supposed to cede their room to the Empress while she's on board, but Meenah isn't one to bother with protocol. Unless it suits her, you think glumly.

Meenah's room in the palace had been enormous, but also immensiley cluttered, largely with treasure. In contrast, your room is (understandably) much smaller and quite spartan, aside from a wooden writing desk you'd brougth on board and several bookcases. Meenah, who is sitting on your bed, definitely doesn’t fit in.

She perks up when she sees you.

"Yo Aranea come over here," she becons you over, and you sit down next to her on the bed.

"What is it?"

"Check this shit out."

She points to the series of scars on her stomach. A gift from an old mutual friend of yours.

"I just noticed they look kinda like a net? Or a web if you want, whichever."

"No they don't." No matter how much you scowl at them, you can't see it. "Did you seriously make me come all the way here just to show me this?"

"Nah, mostly I just wanna cuddle," she grins. "Scoot over, Nerdfang."

You swing your legs up onto the bed and lean against the headboard, and Meenah places her head on your lap.

"You're going to crush my legs," you say, but your fingers are already buried in her hair, massaging her scalp. Meenah hums.

"I miss your braids," you tell her, tugging on her hair lightly.

"So braid it," she says. "I ain't got time to do it no more. Running a revolution is seriously time consuming biz."

You pull her into a better position and get to work happily. Your hands move almost automatically, so used to the motions.

It's familiar and comfortable, and soon you're both settled into your usual back and forth, flirty and teasing comments interspersed in normal conversation. You tug on Meenah's hair every time she says something too cheeky, and she pretends to be offended. Within a few minutes, you manage to completely forget about the possible emergency.

Once you're done, Meenah stretches out and yawns.

"So, what do we do now?" you ask. She turns towards you with a big grin. "I've got something in mind."

She crawls all the way up your body and brings your lips together. You wrap your arms around her.

Kissing her is familiar too. You'd both had plenty of relationships, but all of them were short-lived and many of them disastrous, as Meenah’s scars proved. It took you a while, but eventually you realized how well the two of you worked together. Now you can hardly imagine sharing your flushed quadrant with anyone else.

Meenah's difficult. She's rude and inconsiderate and impulsive, she often resorts to violence and has almost no patience. You, on the other hand, are patient to a fault, prefer talking and trickery to violence, and generally have a starkly different world view from her. Somehow though, you'd always gotten along, despite all your bickering. And it was the same way in your relationship.

You're hers, and she's yours. Somehow, despite all your incompatibilities the two of you just work.

Meenah breaks the kiss and sits up. "C'mon Serket," she purrs and tugs at your collar.

You take a second to take her in. She's only wearing her underwear and one of your uniform jackets, along with all her jewelry. You knew, of course - it's how you left her. But now you really look at her. You lick your lips.

True to form her impatience gets the better of her, and she starts unbuttoning your uniform herself. When it's half open she leans down and runs her tongue over your collarbone. She picks a spot and starts sucking, occasionally pausing to nip at it with her teeth.

She pulls away and snickers. You look down at the deep-blue spot and scowl. At least she had the courtesy of not leaving a hickey somewhere everyone would see it (again), you suppose. That really wouldn't help the rumors.

Seemingly done marking you, Meenah finishes unbuttoning your uniform and lets it fall open. She grabs two handfuls of your breasts over your lacey bra.

"Daaaamn, Serket," she drawls, because she knows her fixture on them annoys you. You decide to use it to your advantage. You shrug out of the jacket and unclip your bra, throwing it aside. Now that Meenah's attention is fully occupied, you flip her over with ease.

"Hey!" she protests, but you silence her by slipping your tongue in her mouth. Her hands find your breasts again and tweak your nipples.

She almost manages to flip you over again after that, but you manage to stay on top by pinning her arms to the headboard.

"Nuh-huh," you say. "Play nice. Hold on to the bar. Let it go, and I leave you here to take care of this," you press your finger against the damp spot in her panties, "all by yourself."

Meenah glares but does as she's told, grabbing the headboard with both hands. You press your lips against hers again as a reward, then kiss a path down her body. Between her breasts, across her toned belly (twice at her belly-button, once on each side), and a final one just above her dark curls.

Then you hook your fingers under the waistband of her panties and take your time pulling them down. The way the damp fabric in the centre sticks to her core even as the rest of her is revealed brings the wet heat in the pit of your belly into sharp relief. You squeeze your thighs together.

Once her panties finally fall away you press a kiss to tip of her bulge. You could tease her, but you're horny, and she's actually obeying your orders for once. You decide to give her what she wants.

You spread her legs and bring your mouth to her nook. You lick your lips in anticipation, when -

"Captain, we need you in Command!" Shit. The intercom. Right. You sigh and get off the bed.

"Hey! Get back here!" Meenah shouts, completely affronted. You look down at her.

Her face and chest are flushed, and she's breathing heavily. She still has her bra on but her panties are stretched between her knees and her nook looks oh-so inviting. She's even still holding onto the headboard.

You get an idea.

You open the nightstand drawer and take out Meenah's awful, fuschia fuzzy handcuffs. Her eyes widen.

"Aranea, no, you can't be searious -" You grin.

Before she gets the chance to move, you run the handcuffs around one of the bars and slap them on both her hands.

"Oh come on!" she says, tugging on them, but to no avail. You pick up your bra from where it landed and put it back on, then grab your jacket.

"Aranea, I swear to cod if you leave me here I'll -"

"Don't worry," you say in your most reassuring voice. "I should be back soon. Like you said, it's probably nothing. And if it isn't, well," you redo the final button and adjust the uniform, then give her a wink.

"It's your own fault."

You hear her swearing after you all the way to the bridge.


	2. Chapter 2

Once you're back in command, you wish you'd had the time to change your underwear. But if wishes were hoofbeasts...

As soon as you're sitting in the Captain's chair again you're surrounded by fussy crewmembers, and your frustration takes a back seat.

Navigator Tarrag speaks first. "Captain, the reading from before is back. It really was a ship. They jumped back into the system about two minutes ago, much closer to us. Now they're just sitting there."

The viewscreen displays what the ship's optical sensors are seeing; a distant speck of purple, too far for you to see any Navy Markings (a complex system of symbols indicating the caste, hatchsign, birthplace and allegiance of the Captan) and more importantly, just out of your firing range.

"Hail them," you order. "It's obviously a purpleblood, but since they've decided to just sit there I suppose we have no choice." Propriety dictates that the higher bloodcaste should greet the other first. So either this was a fellow rebel, rejecting old tradition, or they were hostile. You'll soon find out which.

"Pilot," you add, calling to the blueblood sitting behind the console at the far end of Command. "Lower the sedation on the Helmsman. Prepare for evasive action if necessary."

"Yes ma'am."

Another officer calls to you. "Captain! The other ship has opened communications."

"Put them on speaker," you request. The moment they're on, you speak in your most authoritative voice.

"This is Captain Aranea Serket, of the New Imperial Navy's Mindfang. We're on a routine scouting mission in this system and you're on our route. Identify yourselves."

Command is utterly silent for a few tense seconds, while your transmission travels to them and theirs back to you over the several thousand miles that separate you. Finally, a broad, serious-looking purpleblood appears on the viewscreen and you straighten up.

"This is Admiral Santra Vallel, of Her Imperious Compassion's Liberator. I know exactly who have on board, so don't play dumb." You scowl in response, and she sneers arrogantly. If she were any closer, you'd be in her mind already. "Surrender the Pretender, and you will all be treated as prisoners of war. Do not, and the missiles heading for you will not be disarmed. You have 45 seconds."

You terminate the transmission with a flick of your wrist. Most space battles happened at very long distances, so the kind of missiles they'd shot while you were distracted didn't actually have to hit you to do damage. They only had to detonate closely enough.

"Change course, back where we came from," you order. "And deploy countermeasures immediately."

Several countermeasure beacons shot out of the Mindfang's cannons, towards the enemy ship. They transmitted the same signal your ship did, and were meant to make such missiles explode too early, as well as confuse enemy sensors.

"Countermeasures deployed," announces the pilot. "Impact in 10...9...8...7...6..."

There is no shockwave – you're in a vacuum - but for a few moments, all the readings on the viewscreen were garbled. They returned to normal almost immediately - you'd escaped any damage. "All projectiles successfully neutralized," the pilot says, relief evident in his voice.

Your navigator, speaking over him, sounds much more panicked. "Captain, the enemy ship is gone! They must have used the blast as a cover to jump away."

"Where to?" you demand, even though you know the trick they'd used would make knowing impossible. But no one has time to tell you that, because the Liberator reappears. Right behind the Mindfang.

The readings already told you this, but the hostile ship is massive. Over four times the Mindfang's size, in fact, and probably crewed by at least 100 trolls, which is five times as many crewmembers as the Mindfang has. As Meenah would put it, Interceptor-class ships are mean motherglubbers to take on.

Since you’re going backwards at full thrust, you only have a few seconds to take the situation in before you slam right into them. The violent lurch throws everyone in Command to the ground, including you. By the time you get back up and order the pilot to cut the engines, you’re magnetized onto the Liberator's hull.

Interceptors were built for this kind of combat. There was nowhere you could go, and they'd soon send a boarding crew to cut their way in. Through the airlock, if they really wanted Meenah alive. Through the hull if they weren't worried about killing any of you.

"Captain, what do we do?" someone asks you. Probably Tarrag. She's the youngest member of your crew, hatched after the rebellion started. This was the first time she'd been in combat. But there’s nothing a normal gunship can do against an Interceptor. You'll have to get creative.

"Overload the Helmsman," you decide. The energy discharge that would run through the Mindfang's hull could blow the electromagnets that were holding you to the Liberator, but it was a risky move. Helmsman-powered ships are built like a Faraday cage, to keep such dischargers away from vital systems during Helm malfunctions. They also had an auxiliary power supply.

But in many ways, the Helmsman was the ship. If any of the Mindfang's systems failed, or if the engines blew, you'd be dead in space.

It's also, as is evident from your crew's reactions, a very tasteless move. They respond to your order with dead silence, scowls, even some horrified stares from the least experienced. You can feel their disgust, though you don’t share it. It's the only way, besides sending out a team to cut the ships apart. Even if you had the equipment for that, their boarding party is already on its way, and they outnumber you five to one.

There's no other choice.

You send the order to engineering too, and they began working in tandem with the pilot – switching off security systems, readying the auxiliary power, mobilizing an emergency repair team in case something goes wrong.

Of course, something does.

"I'm sorry, Captain, but the magnetization or the hit we took damaged some of our internal systems," the head engineer informs you over the comm, an edge of dread creeping into his voice. "I can't send the overload order from here. Engineering could do it directly from the Helmroom, but it would mean unsealing it, and the scanners have already picked up the enemy boarding party. We don't have enough time."

Unsealing the Helmroom takes several minutes, you know. And even if the overcharge protocol itself took no time at all the troll who engaged it would still have to get out and reseal it, or the power surge would escape from the psionically-isolated room and seriously damage the rest of the ship, not to mention the crew. Someone would either have to seal the room with someone still inside, or...

"Pilot, is the auxiliary system ready?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then prepare to activate it. Be ready to jump the moment we're free and auxiliary power kicks in. I'm going to overload the Helm myself." You take a deep breath and focus.

You feel the minds of your crew all around you. Most of them are anxious and afraid, but holding it together remarkably well. You feel Meenah’s familiar presence, frustrated and angry but excited at the commotion. She guessed more or less what was going on by now. You'll have to apologize to her a lot later.

You don't feel the boarding party – but you do feel the psychic presence that is masking them, which means their captain is probably with them. It's slightly gratifying, really. It means they know who you are.

Regardless, you never know what you're in for with purpleblood psychics. Even if you could take her and the rest of her team out there were still almost a hundred other presences inside the Liberator. It would be much too complicated to find out what all of them do, which ones you can control, and how best to sabotage them. No, your plan was much simpler.

You focus your attention on the Helmroom. Isolated it may be, but it was built to contain the kind of psionic energy lowblood psychics could generate, not keep out blueblood mind control. It only takes you a minute to worm your way inside, and into the Helmsman's head.

Using trolls to power warships was a very old, and very effective system. It had been outlawed a long time ago, but once your side began wiring prisoners of war into your ships, it gave you a massive edge in the fighting. In the sweep it took the loyalist purplebloods to convince (or, some said, overrule) Her Imperious Compassion to follow suit, almost a hundred systems had fallen into your hands.

Being inside one’s head shows you just how inhumane the process is.

The Helmsman had almost no identity left. They don't know their name, age, gender, anything that would make them seem more than a living battery for the Mindfang. They can't even tell where their slowly decaying body ended, and the metal of the ship began. All you can find in their brain is a swirl of barbiturates and amphetamines that is keeping them at the edge of consciousness they need to be at to function, and the massive amounts of data the ship's sensors are sending there that your own unaltered brain can’t comprehend.

Despite the complexity of the system, making the Helmsman overload is simple. They are, despite everything, still a troll, and forcing them to discharge all their power at once is easy. You've done it before.

Pulling away right before blood starts spurting out of their orifices, you come back to yourself. Every possible alert is blaring on the viewscreen in front of you, warning after warning appearing one over the other - and then everything goes black.

"One... two... three," you count under your breath, and just in time, the lights come back on. As soon as the engines whirr back to life, the pilot pulls away from the Liberator. Everyone in Command exhales as one. You don’t need to be a mind reader to feel their relief.

"We're ready to jump on your order, Captain," the pilot tells you.

"Eight seconds," you say. "And leave their Helmsman a present. I think it's only fair."

The Mindfang's weapons could never pierce an Interceptor's hull, but a direct strike at any ship's Helm deck could cause serious problems. They wouldn't be following you any time soon.

By the time your missile hits, the Mindfang is a system away.

**

Once you're absolutely sure you weren't followed and you've arranged for someone is coming to pick you up, you return to your quarters, where a very annoyed and very bruised Empress is still waiting.

"What the shell were you doing, ramming into a someone like a glubdamned musclebeast while I'm handcuffed to your bed?" she rants, while you're taking off your boots and repeatedly apologizing.

"I'm so sorry Meenah. I knew it might be an enemy ship but I expected a scout, not an Interceptor."

"You fought an Interceptor and you didn't let me watch?!"

"Next time," you promise, and sit on the edge of the bed. You rub her bruised wrists. "What can I do to make it up to you? For once, I won't complain."

"You can finish what you started, for one. You ain't getting off easy just cause you left me high and dry. More like the opposite."

This time you don't even consider teasing her, and get up immediately. Once you're free of your clothes you settle yourself between Meenah's legs. You press an apologetic kiss to her knee. Her bulge, you see, is already (still?) standing to attention.

"Being tied up while shit was going down was kinda hot," she admits. "But it would've been hotter if I could've blasted the motherglubbers myshelf. You got them before you ran like a wiggler, right?"

"Of course," you assure her, and press your mouth against her nook. You run your tongue up and down her lips, coaxing her to get wet again. Her bulge finds your face and interrupts you, splattering your glasses with fuchsia.

Taking them off, you crawl further up the bed and place them on the nightstand. Meenah tugs on her cuffs.

"C'mere," she murmurs, and you smile at her predictability. You bury one hand in her hair and push your chest out, brushing a nipple against her chapped lips. She sucks for a moment, before she runs her tongue over it. You moan when she bites down. Once she's satisfied, you let her repeat the process on the other one.

Afterwards, you lean down to give her a deep kiss. She runs her tongue over your fangs. The cuffs keep rattling and you know how badly she wants to touch you, but she hasn't asked you to let her go yet. You decide to keep an eye on her though, just in case.

You give her one last kiss, then crawl back down to her legs, and quickly slip a finger inside her wet entrance. You start pumping at a steady pace. She moans your name, even though you know she's still furious (in fact, that usually only makes her hotter).

You lick a wet stripe up her bulge and let it slide it into your mouth, now trying to make her come as quickly as possible. She'll punish you later either way, you're sure, but she might go a little easier on you this way.

It doesn't take much to finish her. With your finger rubbing against her favourite spot and your tongue massaging her bulge, she bucks up and releases, fuschia drenching the bed and your arm half way to the elbow.

You pull out and off of her with a wet pop, but she stops you.

"Nuh-huh. You owe me way more than one, Serk. Get back down there."

You really can't argue with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, dear recipient! I hope you had a fun time reading this. I really liked your prompts and had a very hard time choosing which one to write. In the end this one won out, because I recently read Ancillary Mercy, and a SGRUB-less AU allowed me to write something inspired by it.
> 
> I tried to hit as many of your likes as possible (which hopefully worked, since my letter looked pretty much the same as yours), and go for a sort of inverse version of the usual Troll Revolution AU, in which the rebels might actually be worse than those they're trying to overthrow. Maybe I shouldn't have called them rebels, but I couldn't think of a better word.
> 
> I actually have many more ideas for this verse that I didn't manage to incorporate in this fic. 8( As fun as worldbuilding is, I was kind of burying the lede already.


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